make(1) arguments

N

niellusNL

Hi all,

Every now and then I find people describing things on forums on how to use "make".
I notice how they add arguments to the make command such as "make install", "make config" etc.

My question is, where can I find documentation about all these arguments?

Have already tried the regular sources such as the man page for make(1), google and the forum search engine.

Tia,
~ Niels
 
Hi SirDice,

Thanks a lot for the quick reply! I am not sure, but I think I might have to specify my question a bit more.

Currently I am not so much interested on the topic of how to use makefiles but more in how I can use make(1) with the ports tree.

So far I have been experimenting on FreeBSD and my pinnacle was the ability to install VirtualBox from the ports (including the troubleshooting and stuff). For example, when I did that, I got all kinds of errors about how some dependancies weren found or installed. What I did was install a complete gnome2 using pkg_add -r. The reason to that was that I know how long it takes for it to compile, but mainly because I have to wait and set each config option while building.

To trouble shoot these kinds of problem (automating a gnome2 build from ports and find out about dependencies for packages) are pretty easy to google on.

Things I found out are arguments liks "make search keyword=bla", "make install clean", "make config". It's exactly those kinds of arguments which I can't seem to find documentation about, unless I specificly google for them which means I have to know them.

Curious about other arguments possible with the make(1) command I started to look in the man page, but that doesn't show any of them.

Basically what I want is to find out a list with all possible arguments so I can figure out how to use them to install VirtualBox with only the dependancies it needs, and in the future other software. Instead of a full gnome2 install (did that so I was kind of sure I wouldn't miss anything for VirtualBox).
 
Thanks guys! All your answers combined gave me a good understanding of where to find information about this matter, looks like I have some reading up to do :)
 
"only the dependencies it needs" -- you may find the portmaster -i command useful...
Code: 
#examples...
portmaster -i -PP -B /var/db/pkg/shared-mime-info-1.0 p5-Class-C3-0.23
#or sometimes
portmaster -d -B -P -i  -g  shared-mime-info
or some variation, it seems to speed things up if one has many ports installed...
 
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